Just a place to share some thoughts

Two nerds walk into a Tim Horton’s

It seems that one of Diane’s latest passions is her participation in GISHWHES and she’s working on one of the challenges. It involved using technology pre-1970 to solve a problem. In this case, it involved some calculations. Her first inclination was to find someone who knew how to work an abacus.

Striking out there, she moved on to the slide rule and, somehow, I came to mind. We negotiated a time and place – a Tim Horton’s restaurant in South Windsor – during my evening dog walk and then made it happen.

So, I was off to help Team Magnetic North.

We both agreed that the best technology would have been some mental math but it would be hard to record. On to Plan B.

The result was to be a movie and I was just one of the players. My job was to work the slide rule. I had to look my best so I made sure that I had my fingernails nice and tidy before heading into the city. Our planning happened at one of the tables while the adjoining table of teenage girls looked at us with some really strange looks.

So, we killed a few minutes with our planning waiting until the best spot in the restaurant (near the fireplace) became empty and setup began. I thought that Diane would be shooting it with her iPhone but she wanted the best quality so it was her HD camera.

Our challenge – well, when the movie gets through final production, I’ll post it here. In the meantime, here’s a bit of a teaser.

Since we both had brought slide rules, I had a choice!

I went with mine since I thought that the brighter yellow might show up better. Diane had brought her dad’s which included a copyright of 1947 so our technology certainly fell well within the rules of the game.

And, we managed to do the whole thing in a single take. Both voices, an explanation and the calculation.

Plus, some really interested folks looking over our shoulders as we shot this.

I mean, how could you not be interested?

Even I was intrigued by the pen that Diane had milled from an old circuit board.